A MACDONALD'S SENTENCE STYLE DISCIPLINARITY ANALYSIS OF HONORS THESES IN THREE GENRES A dissertation submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice by Dayna Virginia Goldstein December 20th, 2015 i Dissertation written by Dayna V. Goldstein M. A., Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 2005 B. S., University of Utah, 2002 Raymond A. Craig Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Ron Corthell Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Donald Williams Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Michael Pemberton Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee William Kist Grad Faculty Representative Accepted by Robert Trogdon Chair, Department of English James Blank Interim Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ vii LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................... viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .. ……………………………………………………..1 The Honors Thesis .................. ……………………………………………………….1 Honors theses as a desirable textual object of disciplinary study. ....................... 5 MacDonald’s Curricular Continuum as A Project Frame ........................................... 9 Patterns of variation ............................................................................................ 10 Agency ................................................................................................................ 12 Honors Student Writing ............................................................................................. 13 MacDonald’s Continuum and Honors Theses ........................................................... 14 Overview of the Dissertation ..................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW...... …………………...……………...……..21 Early Higher Education to Aydelotte ........................................................................ 21 Oxford as precursor. ......................................................................................... 222 America. ........................................................................................................... 255 Aydelotte to 1957 and the beginning of the Inter-University Committee on the superior student. .................................................................................. 300 Tensions in honors writing and the charge of elitism. ...................................... 325 Being honors ................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.35 iii Scholarly Literature and Textual Analysis of Professional and Novice Performances................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.36 The College Literature Classroom ...................................................................... 55 History and Writing ................................................................................................... 67 Historiography .................................................................................................... 68 Historical discourse community. ........................................................................ 70 Written Discourse in History ..................................................................................... 73 The development of history writing expertise. ................................................... 75 Anthropology ............................................................................................................. 89 Cultural anthropology ......................................................................................... 90 Reading and writing cultural anthropology. .............................................. 100 Readings in cultural anthropology classes. ............................................... 103 Learning to write like a cultural anthropologist ........................................ 108 Physical/biological anthropology ..................................................................... 113 Science and the delimiting of inferences in physical/biological anthropology. ............................................................................................. 116 The history of physical anthropology as a delimiter of interpretation…...117 Expert professional discourse in biological anthropology ........................ 118 Pedagogy and discourse for novices. ........................................................ 122 CHAPTER 3: METHODS ............................................................................................. 89 Coding ...................................................................................................................... 129 Continua ............................................................................................................... 13333 iv Beyond Suitability ................................................................................................. 1388 Location ................................................................................................................... 139 Theses Selection .................................................................................................. 14141 Reading and Coding ............................................................................................ 14143 Tallying .................................................................................................................... 146 Calculations ............................................................................................................. 147 Analysis ................................................................................................................... 147 Secondary Coding .................................................................................................... 148 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 148 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS ............................................................................................. 150 Results of Coding .................................................................................................... 159 Comparison to MacDonald ...................................................................................... 159 Secondary Coding Results ....................................................................................... 164 Exceptions .............................................................................................................. 1689 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION ................................................................................... 17171 Overall Similarities among the Three ...................................................................... 171 Literature Discussion ........................................................................................... 17676 About literature as a discipline as constructed by this pattern. ...................... 1799 History ................................................................................................................... 1900 History as a tension between narrative and analysis ........................................ 194 Learning and writing in history. ....................................................................... 196 Anthropology ........................................................................................................... 201 v Overall Differences among the Three ...................................................................... 207 Overall Differences between Honors and MacDonald ............................................ 210 Conclusion of Discussion ........................................................................................ 212 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION..................................................................................... 214 Results Restatement ................................................................................................. 214 Limitations ............................................................................................................... 215 Suggestions for Further Research ............................................................................ 221 REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 233 vi List of Figures Figure 1 History-Professional History vs. Honors Theses by Class Error! Bookmark not defined.160 Figure 2 Literature-Professional History vs. Honors Theses by Class ........................... 162 Figure 3 Honors Anthropology Findings by Class ......................................................... 164 Figure 4 Professional Psychology Findings by Class ..................................................... 164 vii List of Tables Table 1 Anthropological Writing Divided into Four Quadrants ..................................... 103 Table 2 Coding Scheme .................................................................................................. 130 Table 3 List of Renamed Theses ..................................................................................... 143 Table 4 Coding Tally Box..............................................................................................